Burn Bright

Good that Boyd was sending the files to Charles, then. He’d told his father’s message app about that, so his da would know that Charles was about to receive whatever information that data held. If he really didn’t want Charles to see something, he could come home and take care of this matter himself.

Anna brought a plate with crumbs and two peanut-butter cookies on it. “Have a peanut-butter cookie,” she told him. “They’re good.”

He looked at the cookies, still lost in trying to follow his da’s Byzantine thought process with half the information he needed to come to any kind of accurate conclusion.

“I thought you were making brownies,” he said.

“Brownies?” said Tag, distracted from his quiet conversation with a couple of other pack members. “I like brownies.”

“They have orange peel in them,” Leah told Tag, and Charles could tell that she thought that was a bad thing.

“Mercy’s recipe?” Tag said happily. “Awesome. You should get those baked before you go, Anna. One of your brownies, and those recluses will be happy to come out of their hidey-holes to have a few more.”

“The brownies can wait,” said Leah firmly. There was something in her voice that told Charles that the brownie dough would be in the garbage before it ever saw an oven.

If a dog made the sound Tag made then, Charles would have called it whining. But Tag’s eyes were shrewd and focused on Leah.

It was, Charles thought, very easy to make the mistake of buying Tag’s cheery-barbarian appearance and miss the sharp man inside who knew very well whose brownies he was praising—over the peanut-butter cookies that Leah had evidently made. And, once recognizing that sharp man, it would be easy to make the mistake of thinking that the barbarian berserker was a disguise. Tag was both—and that was before his wolf entered into consideration.

• • •

“TELL ME HOW,” Charles said, “you managed to get stuck going out to warn the wildlings with Asil?”

Anna couldn’t see his face because he was in the process of stripping out of his soot-stained shirt, and she couldn’t read his neutral tone.

“It wasn’t me,” she said. “Asil spoke up at just the wrong moment and sparked Leah’s desire to stir up trouble. It’s a talent he has. To her credit, she’s right, we need to get them all warned as soon as possible. Three teams will do that better than one.”

Charles emerged, his face as neutral as his voice had been. “All right.” Anna winced in sympathy when he jerked at the band at the end of his braid, and it snapped.

“I know,” she said with a grimace. “I know you would be happier pairing me with a different wolf. Maybe Sage should come with me and Asil go with you?”

Charles considered her suggestion that they switch partners but finally shook his head. “No. Brother Wolf doesn’t like it, but it is better this way. Some of these wolves wouldn’t listen to a messenger they see as lower-ranking.” He snorted. “Some of them won’t listen to any of us, either. But if one of them decides to cause trouble … Asil is a better deterrent than Sage or you. No one sane would attack the Moor.”

“Do we tell Leah about the traitor? So she can keep watch for oddities, too?” Anna asked. “Or work it so Asil is her partner, so one of us in each group knows to keep an eye out?”

He unbraided his hair, something Anna never got tired of watching. It wasn’t just that his hair was beautiful—though it was. It was the intimacy of the moment. No one else got to see what he looked like with his hair down.

“No,” he said finally. “Asil and you and I know. That is enough. I’m not convinced any of the wildlings is our traitor—you’ll see what I mean when you meet some more of them. Not only would they have trouble accumulating information—because most of them never see the main pack. But only a few of them are stable enough to hide lies this big without betraying themselves.”

“Okay,” Anna said. “Hester could have. How many Hesters are there among your father’s wildlings?”

He paused, raised an eyebrow, and nodded at her. “Score for you,” he said. “How about I warn Leah that we have reason to believe that these people were asking about the wildlings?”

“You don’t want to tell her that there is a traitor?” Anna asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t trust her to be subtle.”

Anna laughed despite herself. No, subtle was not something Leah was particularly good at.

“Who is Leah going with?” he asked.

“Juste,” Anna told him.

Charles grunted in what sounded to her like approval.

“She gave you and Sage the ones she thought would be the worst to deal with,” Anna said. “She gave Asil and me the most broken. She was careful, she told me, to make sure that ours have trouble controlling their wolves, not the other way around. That way, hopefully, Asil won’t have to kill any of them.”

“She took the easiest,” Charles said, taking off his boots.

“That’s not how she put it—but I think that’s how she sees it,” Anna agreed. “Should I have objected when she paired me with Asil?” She hadn’t planned on asking him, but the words came out anyway. “I probably could have made her send Asil with Sage if I had wanted to push it.”

Charles’s eyes brightened for an instant, and though no word came out of his mouth, she heard Brother Wolf’s yes as clearly as if he’d spoken into her ear.

“No,” Charles said firmly. “She might enjoy stirring up trouble, but she came to the right conclusions. You’ll be safe with Asil. Sage will be safe with me. Leah will be safe because of Da—but Juste will be a good reminder.”

He pulled out clean clothes. “From the standpoint of getting a look at all the wildlings, it might have worked out better if you and Leah had been paired up. As it is, we’ll have to find a way to see all the wolves that Leah and Juste have on their list. Logistically speaking, the wildlings most likely to have betrayed the pack are in Leah’s group—because they are the most stable of the bunch.”

Anna thought about it. “I could probably get her to change it up that much.”

Charles shook his head. “I don’t think that Leah is dominant enough to get the wildlings to back down on her own, and your effect is too unpredictable.” He gave her a laughing glance over his shoulder. “And if Juste and Asil are in a car for a full day, we might be pulling out bodies. Juste has a problem with Asil.”

“Why?” Anna thought about it just a second, and said, “You mean he blames Asil for not killing the Beast of Gévaudan?” The Beast, Jean Chastell, had controlled most of Central Europe for centuries. The Moor had kept Chastell out of the Iberian Peninsula.

Charles grunted agreement. Evidently finished with the subject of tomorrow’s task, he said, “I tried calling Da before I came in. He’s still not answering his phone. I left a voice message filling him in on what’s been happening. He’d have felt Hester’s death. If he’s not getting back to me, it’s because he doesn’t want to. He’s not with Samuel, I checked. So he’s got some other game going on.”

Anna had come to the same conclusion.

“Bastard,” she said with feeling.

It made him laugh. He touched her cheek and pulled back his finger to show her the dirt on it. “Wanna shower with me?” he asked. The laughter hadn’t left his eyes, though his face was serious.

This house, she thought, was a prison in which everyone knew what everyone else was doing. Too many sharp ears and sharper noses to keep their private life private. She understood that Charles didn’t care who knew when they made love—the opposite, in fact.

But he’d taken Anna’s desires into consideration. At the Marrok’s home, they slept side by side in the guest bedroom, and all they did was sleep. Most days they stopped in to check on their own house. The horses were being fed by someone else, but they needed to be worked. Usually, they managed to sneak in an hour of privacy for lovemaking—and just being alone together.